like a name from a fairytale
by portionss-forfoxes
Summary: In her very last moment alive, Amy Pond thinks of the doctor, and realizes there is no escaping it.  It was always supposed to be him.
1. the gods of time

**a/n: Tried to keep this one as canon as possible...It's pretty damn hard. Oh, the woes of Amy/Eleven. And the joys.**

like a name from a fairytale

In her very last moment alive, Amy Pond thinks of the doctor, and realizes there is no escaping it. It was always supposed to be him.

Rory's grasping her hand, kneeling by her side. She can't quite see his face, can't quite make out the familiar, mild lines of his cheekbones, his nose, his chin. He is so simple, so…Rory. Funny thing, Amy thinks, that if she had to pick one word to describe him it would be "down-to-earth." He should never have left Earth, really. That was her doing. Her destiny had gotten tangled up with his at some indistinguishable point, and he'd been hauled along on an adventure only she'd been meant to take.

He'd done well, Rory Williams. He'd done so well.

And she felt a wave of love for him, for the boy who saved her from her own teenage angst. He'd done nothing dramatic, nothing to sweep her off her feet—she'd not once in her life been swept off her feet by Rory Williams—but he'd been _there_, unfailingly, from the start, and consistency was something Amy could use a little of.

No, Rory Williams was not destined to hold the stars in the palm of his hand. But Amy Pond was.

He'd dropped from the sky on an uneventful midnight in Leadworth, England. The wind swayed the branches of the trees with no real ambition, and the grass was cool, growing wet with dew. Amy remembered. She remembered quite a bit about that front lawn—she'd spent some time there.

"Amelia Pond," he'd said. "Like a name from a fairytale." It had taken her until now to realize that's exactly what she was: a character in a fairytale, one who featured, but was not orchestrated by, the Doctor himself. Everywhere he went he created a fairytale, his blue pumpkin carriage gallivanting about scattering fairy dust.

But it was not all him. He did not choose his co-stars, his Cinderellas and, perhaps more fittingly, his Belles. They were chosen, somewhere along the way, by the gods of time. Their names, their lives, were a fixed point, woven into the fabric of time. Amy Pond's especially.

The crack in her wall was there for a reason. All those piles of crimson curls, those seaside green eyes, the face dotted by the Sun himself, the pale, unblemished skin of a swan…A lonely orphan, living with a neglectful aunt, precocious but insecure, sometimes the receiver of odd, confused and/or vexed looks from friends at school…She must have been too much for the time gods to handle, too hard to resist, all of her story-book potential bursting from within. Thus, her fate was carved; yet time is bendable, and so, obviously, was her fate.

The whirring sound of that night, just after she'd said a prayer to Santa—what she now knew to be the scrape of the Tardis' brakes—the odd thing was that it sounded familiar. Like when she was in her room, facing away from the window, and she knew which car pulling in was her aunt's just by the sound of it. Until this very day, as she lays here dying, Amy thought she must have heard it somewhere before. Things don't always happen to her in the right order, you see, so recalling a linear timeline is considerably more difficult.

But—no. That night was the first time in her short—oh, much too short life that Amy had ever heard the whir of the Tardis engines. And yet she could've sworn it was a sound, a song, she'd heard whispered across the treetops one summer's day. That's why she hadn't been wary of him, the strange man who destroyed her shed and devoured all their fish fingers and custard—his vehicle had sounded, well, _friendly_. Amy supposes the time gods know their stuff.

Amy forces her eyes open once more—they're so heavy, all of the sudden—and once again sees Rory's face, _earthly_, a reminder of the _simple_ joys in life, of home.

But the thing is, Amy never much cared for home.

On the other hand, the Doctor's very face seemed otherworldly, and Amy knew he hadn't always looked that way, and couldn't forever, but she could not see him any other way. His face, his body, his mannerisms suited him, and Amy thought for a moment now how ridiculous that sounded—_of course _a person's mannerisms suit them, they _are _them—but everything was different when it came to the Doctor. His jaw was never quite straight, his face always a bit asymmetrical, like it, too, had no patience for routine. And his hair—well, Amy had once scavenged his bathroom secretly to find Axe or Old Spice or _some _kind of men's super-duty hair gel, but to no avail. The Doctor's hair was what it was, and she'd never come across anything quite like it.

_Where is he, anyway? _Amy wonders, and it's surprisingly how idle, how lacking in originality her thoughts are at such a moment (Is it like this for everyone? Dying, that is?). She remembers where they are, then, and what they're fighting, and of course the Doctor's off doing the fighting—winning, hopefully…probably…certainly. It is then that Amy realizes he doesn't know, he has no idea, and she feels a surge of panic. If she cannot _live_ without him, and she never has, not since she was seven (but no, before that, he'd been there—the time gods had made sure the fairy-tale was set in place), then surely she cannot _die_ without him. And he didn't know. He had no idea that his mad, impossible Amy Pond is dying, will be dead, not five or ten or fifty years from now but _now_, right now. He has no idea.

"Amy," Rory's saying. His words are blurrier than his face. "Amy, please, no…stay with me…" She can feel something wet, something warm on her face, and she hasn't the slightest clue where it came from. She tastes salt on her dry lips, and knows these are tears. Her tears? No, his. Rory's. Rory of Earth. "Amy, no…"

And suddenly he is there. His face hovers above hers, and everything snaps into focus, clearer than she'd like, _sharper_. He isn't crying like Rory—his child's forehead is frowning, creased with the ruts of a thousand years' misery. She feels pressure, something strong…he's holding her face on both sides.

"Amelia Pond," he says sternly, and she can see him so much better than she ever could before. How did she never notice his eyes? Were they always like this, deep and darker than shade of blue should be, torrents of angry waves rumbling beneath the surface, and below, a pond—_pond_—of resignation? A motionless pond of sorrow, the bitter acceptance of an unjust fate? _Yes_, Amy knows, _they _have _always been that way_; but it's stronger now. "_You will not_." It's an order.

But she's surpassed him now. This is the one thing she understands, the one thing she's experienced that he never has. Everything makes so much sense now. _Doctor_…She smiles.

"Oh, Doctor," she whispers, searching for his hand still holding her face, but her grip will not tighten, her hands won't respond to her brain—everything is shutting down, and it feels restful, like the waters are calming. So she just lays her hand over his, her fingers curling over his as best they can. And as she looks up at him, her vision blackening at the sides, but his Face of the Universe still flawlessly clear, his composure starts to break, and he's no longer stern, no longer in control. He begins to look desperate, clinging to her head, stroking her hair, shaking her a tiny bit. And he looks angry, angry at her, but that's all right, she doesn't mind. He just doesn't see, that's all.

"Oh, Doctor," she sighs. "You were always supposed to be mine, weren't you?" And for the first time since all of this started, the contentedness is smudged and she feels _sad_, truly sad. She frowns. This clarity comes with a price, and the price is regret. How could she not have seen? The time gods must've had to bend a lot of rules for her, but there was one rule they could never fully break. She'd just been too blind to see it.

"Amy, Amy, Amy," the Doctor whispers, shaking his head; the first tear in the gallows of his eye geared up for battle, but he held the army at bay. "I always _was_."

His words make her smile. She pats his hand, his warm hand, and feels the first tear fall; and like the beat of a drum, keeping time to a song that cannot end, the time gods shift their story once again. Their fairy-tale is over now, and its ending means it never was.

She takes one last look at him, her raggedy Doctor, the man she's broken, the man she's fixed, the man who's torn her, the man who's repaired her, _time_ and _time_ again, and now she is at peace.

She dies still holding his hand.

* * *

><p><strong>an: I think there will be one more chapter. I know it seems like it couldn't possibly go on, but I have an idea in mind. We'll see.**


	2. red hair in the garden

Title: like a name from a fairytale  
>Setting: Anytime on any of the Doctor, Amy, and Rory's adventures, past, present or future.<br>Characters, Pairings: Amy Pond, Amy/Eleven, Rory, smidgen of Amy/Rory  
>Summary: In her very last moment alive, Amy Pond thinks of the doctor, and realizes there is no escaping it. It was always supposed to be him.<br>Second Chapter Summary: The Doctor runs away to an earlier time, to try to absorb the color in Amy Pond.

like a name from a fairytale

CHAPTER TWO

_red hair in the garden_

He knew he shouldn't—God help him, did he know—but he also knew that at this point there was absolutely nothing that could stop him.

The Tardis took a little longer to come alive this time. The lights on the console flickered uncertainly, kindling to [a somewhat dimmer] life one by one. The engines whirred for longer than necessary, delaying takeoff. Was it just him, or was everything languid now, every moment passing with excruciating slowness, every second lived as though dying? Something seemed to be closing in on him, on time itself…

There was no joy in takeoff, no thrill to short-circuit his brain, no sheer wave of glee to send a leap to his heart. He was landed before he remembered leaving. When had he decided?

He stepped out of the Tardis, the door fluttering shut behind him with a feeble scrape. His foot treaded out onto the ground, and each step felt heavier than before. Since when had it been a massive undertaking to lift his leg? Had everything always looked so fixed, so unwavering, so black-and-white? Where was the color?

He found it, of course. That's what he'd come for.

Red hair in the garden.

The sun lit up the flecks of gold among the fire, the hollows of each soft curl a rich auburn shadow. She was a goddess of the earth, and flowers bloomed with the touch of her pale, freckled finger. She dwelled in a sea of them, fervent geraniums, timid pansies, eminent dahlias and—and, oh, of course, the sunflowers. Her back was to him, and she was among the sunflowers. All he could catch sight of was her hair (of course, of course her hair) amidst the rows and rows of sunflowers, each straining towards the sky, each brighter than the last.

He'd landed in her backyard, quiet as a mouse. But she'd heard him. Of course she'd heard him. The gods of time had made sure of that.

(Because years ago, when time was on her side and she held her childhood in her hands, she'd heard a sound, a song, threaded into the quilt of her dreams, an extra note in all the music she heard, one she couldn't find on the piano. A whir. A whisper. An engine, a start).

She's racing toward him, and he hadn't meant for this, no, no, he hadn't meant for this. He'd wanted to watch her, to observe her, to absorb her from afar, Amy Pond on fire. (For she was always, always on fire.)

But no. Now he'd gotten himself in too deep, he's opening up a Pandora's box even more terrifying than the last, a box inside of him he is most certainly not ready to face. But it's running at him right now, sun-specked hair swelling out behind her in sprightly waves, alert, alive, afire.

And now she is here, in his arms, and she is warm (not cold) and moving (not still) and she smells of apples and sunflowers and Amy (not…)

"Doctor!" she shouts, only she's not shouting; it just feels like she is, because her words are close and made of breath and breath is made of life and life is made of Amy—or is it the other way around? "You've come back."

"I always do," he informs her, and it is true, even in the end it is true, because it is she who does not come back for him.

"It's been a month," she says, grinning and clutching each of his arms. There are tears in her eyes, and they're tears of joy. He should know that. "I mean…I know you don't always know exactly how long it's been, so…" She trailed off, narrowing her eyes. "How long has it been for you?" she asked him. "Five minutes, I suppose," she grumbled.

"No, no," the Doctor replied, a tiny smile on his face, his eyes downcast to hide the slight tinge of sadness. "Much longer than that."

Amy clamped her hands over her mouth, looking both grave and delighted. "Oh my God, are you a future Doctor?"

The Doctor raised both eyebrows and nudged her playfully. "Let's just say I'll be back here in about, oh, one month, and I won't remember any of this."

Amy giggled. "Ooh, how exciting! You and I have a secret then, eh?" She bumped her hip against his conspiratorially, placing one finger over her lips. "Don't worry, I won't tell him—you, that is."

The Doctor smiled dolefully again, hands in pockets. Amy chose to ignore this for the time being.

"C'mon," she said, looping an arm through his. "Let's take a turn about the garden, olden-style."

"After you, m'lady," the Doctor said, falling into step beside her.

"Oh!" Amy burst out, their leisurely stroll interrupted before it began. She leapt out in front of him, eyes wide. "But—if you're from a later time, then that means you don't die! You're not going to die! Ha!" She laughed euphorically. "I knew it, I did…"

"Amy," the Doctor responded solemnly, grasping both her shoulders firmly. He looked at her very sternly. "This does not mean you can behave any different than if you believed I truly was going to die. That could meddle with everything that's happened, and alter it all. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," Amy replied, sighing; her bubble had been effectively burst.

"Do you promise you'll act no differently now that you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, I promise!" Amy insisted exasperatedly, returning to his side to resume their walk.

"So," she began, "tell me about our future adventures. Because we'd better have them! I mean, I know when you left last month it felt rather…permanent; but you said I hadn't seen the last of you, so we do have adventures, don't we, Doctor? You and I, we've got to."

The Doctor looked sideways at her, and smiled reassuringly. "Yes," he answered. "Yes, we do," and it was no lie.

Amy looked happy, which, as always, gave the Doctor that ridiculous surge of self-satisfaction, like he'd done something right. (Which was absurd, really. He'd done nothing right, and he was doing absolutely everything wrong. He didn't deserve to see a happy Amy; he didn't deserve to believe he could still bring a smile to her face.)

"I see you've planted sunflowers," the Doctor observed as they approached the garden. Amy stopped for a moment to survey her work, arms crossed, bottom lip bit in concentration…. The Doctor watched her, and all the color here was almost overwhelming. There was the physical color, of course—the blinding bright blueness of the sky, the fresh, minty green of the trees, the endless array of flowers just bursting with it—but there was other color, too; color in the high-up chirping of birds, color in the solidness of the earth beneath him, color in the untainted vividness of Amy's "concentration" face, how familiar, how pure it was to him. It was hard to explain. She was hard to explain. Nothing new there.

"Yeah, I have," Amy conceded. "I still think about Vincent every once in a while…how clearly he saw things the rest of us couldn't. And I don't just mean the blind space-chicken." She grinned at him, bumping against his shoulder as though in acknowledgement of an inside joke. They had so many of them—inside jokes, that is—and suddenly the Doctor felt the urge to spend a lazy Sunday with Amy revisiting each and every one. Or a thousand lazy Sundays.

"I guess I just wanted to be reminded of everything I've seen," Amy said, and he followed her into the garden, into the rows and rows of towering sunflowers. She weaved between the stems, and what was the Doctor's maze was Amy's kingdom. He kept track of her by keeping an eye on her purple shirt and orange hair. He almost wanted to reach out and hold it, trailing behind her with her hair as his anchor. "I mean…married life is great and all…" The Doctor followed the sound of her voice, as he was temporarily disoriented. "…and you know how much I love Rory; he's, well, the perfect husband…" The Doctor caught sight of a flash of purple, and lunged for it before it could move again. "It's just…it's not the same. I miss being a child of the universe. I miss all that." She spun around suddenly, and the Doctor tried to look like he'd been right behind her the whole time. "I miss you, Doctor."

He smiled. "And I you, Amy Pond."

She stepped out of the rows now, and both of them tilted their heads upward, shading their eyes from the sun to see the sunflowers in full bloom.

*/*

They spent the day together, and the Doctor was surprised to find that it was wholly ordinary, and not entirely unpleasant. Time always flew when he was with Amy—especially when he was running.

*/*

"Where's Rory?" he asked over tea in the nook. Nook. Who'd ever have guessed such a thing existed? It was a marvelous invention, like a kitchen, only smaller, and generally aimed at more flippant consumptions, such as those of muffins and crumpets and tea.

"He's on a retreat," Amy replied casually, returning the kettle to the stove.

The Doctor was positively horrified. "Retreat? Rory's gone to war? Don't tell me all that 'Roman' stuff's gone to his head! He can't go to war—wait, what year is it anyway; is there even a war to go to? Of course there is, there's always a war, you humans, but I mean—"

"No, Doctor," Amy assured him, rolling her eyes and patting his arm sarcastically from across the table. "He's gone on a corporate retreat, only…for doctors and nurses and what not." She waved her hand in the air dismissively, bringing the teacup to her lips.

"Oh," the Doctor said, deflated. "Right then." Who would've thought Rory had an actual job? It was easy to forget things like that, when you were the Doctor.

*/*

Somehow the Doctor got to talking (it was quite easy for him, believe it or not). He told Amy stories of places he'd been and the people he'd loved, the people whose dreams he'd outdone. Amy liked the tales of Martha Jones the best (the Doctor would draw parallels between the two later, when he had more time for his typical painstaking introspection). So the Doctor spoke of the Family of Blood (Amy searched herself earnestly for a pocket-watch in the hopes that she was a secret Time Lady, but no such luck), and of Martha Jones' walk to save the Earth.

("She saved you," he told her, "you just don't remember." Amy smiled smugly and shrugged. "Ah, but you forget—I can remember things I'm not supposed to." She drummed her fingers against the counter in a steady rhythm. "I would've been twelve, yeah?" The Doctor dragged his eyes away from her beating fingers to look at her preoccupied face. "Yes," he said, hiding a smile, "you would've.")

He told Amy about the dalek with the heart of gold at the peak of the Empire State Building, how he and Martha had saved the humans (as per usual) but lost the hybrids.

All of the sudden Amy jumped up from her seat, in a frenzy. She waved her arms spastically and by way of clarification shouted, "Ooh! Ooh!"

"What? What is it?" the Doctor asked, rising to his feet, unsure whether to be concerned, intrigued or excited.

"Speaking of the Empire State Building…" she said, tapping his nose, and then she fled to the living room. The Doctor followed closely behind, befuddled.

Amy shuffled through some [unorganized, of course] bins beneath the telly, then exclaimed, "Aha!" and bounded over to the DVD player to pop in a disc.

"Have you ever seen it?" Amy asked him, eyes wide with joy and elation as the Menu screen came up.

"No, no, can't say I have. Met Cary Grant, of course—worked with him while filming—interesting man, very interesting man—but I never actually saw the final product. Is it good?"

"Ha!" Amy snorted in mockery. " 'Is it good,' he asks. Of course it's bloody good. It's fantastic!"

"Fantastic, eh? Fantastic. I should say that more. Used to say it a lot, hardly say it at all now: 'fantastic.'"

"Doctor, focus!" Amy instructed, slapping his cheek.

"So," he declared (when finished whining over being struck), "An Affair to Remember. I suppose we're going to watch it now, then." He wrinkled his nose.

"Yes," Amy agreed, forcing him down onto the couch. "I don't care how short your attention span is. You will sit through this."

"Fine, fine…"

*/*

"Are you crying?"

"No…"

"You're crying, aren't you? I can't believe it! You're properly, properly crying! Ha!"

"Shut up, I'm not."

"Oh, don't try and deny it. There are most certainly some tear-tracks on your face. And was that a sniffle?"

"No. No, it wasn't. Sniffle? Ha! I don't sniffle."

"See? There it was again. You are, without a doubt, in tears over An Affair to Remember."

"Stop it, I'm not!"

*/*

Amy took him for a walk in the park. The trees were flush with green, sun leaking through the gaps in the branches to flick across the path. A boy and his dog played Frisbee on the grass. Two teenagers snogged on a picnic blanket. An old man peeled an orange on a park bench—the Doctor could smell it, and it reminded him of Christmas on Gallifrey.

A nice old lady walking the opposite direction gave them a sweet, denture'd smile and said,

"What a beautiful family you'll have."

The Doctor stopped, stock-still, and began stuttering,

"Oh, we're not—"

"Sshh," Amy said, patting his arm as the lady walked on, still grinning. "Don't ruin it."

*/*

He took her out for dinner at a fancy restaurant. She tied her hair back in a bun at the nape of her neck, and wore a black silky thing that made the skin around her collarbone look very milky and very smooth. She strapped on high heels and told him her feet were hurting for him, and she smacked her lips as she surveyed the menu. They were fire-truck red that night—her lips, not the menus. She kept a tube of lipstick in her purse.

The Doctor wore a suit, and he wrapped a tie around his neck and said his bowtie was lonely because of her, and he combed his mangy hair and put on a pair of wing-tips and held her arm "like a real gentleman," she said.

She bumped his knee five times under the table. He wonders if she noticed.

*/*

"Where the hell are the fish fingers?" the Doctor demands to know, rooting feverishly through the contents of the Ponds' freezer. He chose to ignore the various items that fell to the floor as a byproduct of his search. "And the custard, for that matter!"

Amy shrugged and turned a page of the newspaper, feigning nonchalance. "Rory doesn't like fish fingers," she supplied airily. Luckily the Doctor was paying too much attention to the freezer to notice.

"What? Doesn't like fish fingers? What idiocy! No matter—Rory's a fool, then. We'll just go to the grocery store and get some." He rubbed his hands together loudly, then slapped them onto his hips, pleased with his ingenious idea.

"Oh we will, will we?" Amy reasoned with one eyebrow cocked. She set down the newspaper on the kitchen counter (she hadn't really been reading it anyway—boring stuff), slid off her stool and made her way over to him. "And you suppose I'll be paying for this, then? You know, "nurse" and "kissogram" aren't exactly the highest-paid of careers, and I can't afford to—"

"Oh, shush, I've got my sonic, haven't I?" the Doctor said, whipping it out. "Now where's the closest ATM?"

After withdrawing a total of £5,000 in notes (the Doctor admitted he wasn't quite sure how much a box of frozen food cost nowadays, considering galactic comparative currencies and all), Amy and the Doctor found themselves in line at the Costcutter; it being 10:30 at night, the express lane was noticeably sparse.

An androgynous cashier with an incapacity for facial expression rang them up. The Doctor beamed proudly at him/her as s/he did so.

"That'll be ten pounds," s/he said in a monotone. The Doctor handed him/her a £100 note.

"Thank you!" he gushed, seizing the plastic bag purposefully. "Keep the change!"

Over fish fingers and custard ("You're right," Amy admitted to him, "It's so disgusting it's good."), the Doctor asked Amy if she remembered very well the first night he'd eaten this meal with her.

" 'Course I do, you stupid bloody idiot," Amy replied, and she stuffed more food in her mouth.

The Doctor chewed, smiling absentmindedly and staring at her. Strands of hair had fallen out of her bun, and she didn't know it, but she had a spot of custard on the corner of her lip.

He grinned.

*/*

"Doctor?"

"Mmm…"

"Why were you crying?"

"Hm?"

"At An Affair to Remember—why were you crying?"

"…I don't suppose I know."

"C'mon, you must have some idea."

"No, really, I don't."

"Doctor…"

"Huh…oh, all right. I suppose it just…reminded me."

"Reminded you of what?"

"So many questions, Pond."

"I only ask because you never really answer."

"Touché…. All right, well, if you must know, it just got me thinking…"

"What?"

"It just got me thinking, Amy: why sit idly by and watch this movie from afar when we could fly to the Empire State Building, and we could watch Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr share that fateful last kiss as the cameras roll in 1957, and if that's not enough we could go to 1993 and be there as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan exchange the first hellos in Sleepless in Seattle, and if that's still not enough, we could hop right back in the Tardis and head to 2029, where they're filming a combined remake of both movies, called Sleepless and Remembering—it wins the Oscar."

"…Who's in it?"

"Suri Cruise and Maddox Jolie-Pitt."

"Ha! No way!"

"Yes. Way."

"Huh…"

*/*

"There's a carbon copy of another me on Earth in an alternate universe," he tells her.

She smiles, taps his nose. "There's one of me, too."

*/*

He points at a star cluster to the left of their sprawled-out bodies, up and above.

"You've been there," he tells her.

"I have?" Amy says breathily, looking at him for confirmation. Somehow, her eyes look greener in the moonlight.

"Yes," he says, and he turns his head sideways, so their noses are touching. "You and I together."

"Hold my hand," she whispers, and he does.

*/*

"Come with me," he says, standing in the threshold of the Tardis.

Amy smiles wistfully, her eyes on the dewy grass. It's funny how much she can figure out about him in just a day. "No," she says.

"Amy, please," the Doctor says urgently, and he grabs both her hands, trying to get her to look at him. "I could show you the planet Sakura, where it's springtime all year round. I could take you to the Saharan land of the Blistorn galaxy, where any plant that grows is considered sacred. I could take you to the very first Beatles concert, just after Ringo joined—he'd like you, I think. I could show you three hundred years from now, when your Aunt Sharon's great-great-great-great-great granddaughter seduces the married prince of Monaco. I could take you to a planet where they worship gingers—we could take Vincent, you two could be royalty! I could go visit my wife Marilyn with you! Amy, don't you see how much is out there for you and I to do?I could take you back here one day and you'll look up at the stars and know you've been to absolutely every one! We don't have to end, Amy! The girl who waited and her raggedy doctor. We are fated, you and I. Amy, can you imagine?"

She's looking at him now, staring at him, and her mouth hangs open slightly and tears are in her eyes. He's clutching her hands so tightly it almost hurts.

"Doctor," she says softly, "no. You're running from something, and whatever it is, you have to face it now."

"No, no, NO!" the Doctor growled, and he let go of her and kicked the Tardis, his rage and desperation overcoming him, frightening Amy. He caught his breath, leaning against the Tardis with his head hanging between his arms. "Amy, you don't understand," he said quietly, much more calmly than he feels. He whirls around, gazing at her with tragic, broken eyes. "A Time War, the end of the universe, my own death...those I can face. But this, Amy, this..." And he seizes her wrists now, leaning close to her, his face haggard. She gasps and pulls away on impulse, but he's gripping her tightly. "This will be the end of me," he hisses, and though he cannot say, no words can leave his mouth, his eyes yearn to convey everything, searching her in all their misery and desperation and sorry hope. She does t learn everything from them, but she learns something-she's not sure what-and she softens, allowing him to hold her, stroke her hair, touch her face, kiss her forehead, hold it to his own. She closes her eyes; a tear slips out.

"Amy," he begs, "run with me. We can escape everything. We can escape time, we can escape..." Death.

"I won't," she whispers as he kisses her forehead, her hairline, her nose.

"I won't," she says, as he kisses her eyes, her jawline, her cheeks

"I won't," she tells him as he kisses her lips, the inside of her mouth, her tongue.

"I might," she gasps as his body kisses the inside of hers.

"Is this a dream?" she whispers as they lay side by side in the evening dew. (Or is it the morning dew? She's lost track.) "Because I would never do this in real life, but I do it all the time in my dreams."

"Yes, Amy," the Doctor replies, kissing her forehead one last time. A choked sigh can't be stopped from escaping his lips. "This was a dream. Forget this ever happened. Don't mention it to me, to him, to anyone...It's not real."

Amy frowns, her eyes closed. Another tear falls. "That's what you always say in my dreams," she chokes out, broken to realize this has not been real. She'd held him in her fingers, and she'd let him go. He'd never been there at all.

"See?" the Doctor says, smiling brokenly. "I'm legitimate. Signed, sealed, and delivered: just a dream."

He gathers up his clothes and steps inside the Tardis.

He leaves the doors open as he flies away, and he sees red hair in the garden. **  
><strong>


	3. and she cannot wait to meet him

**a/n: The ironic thing is that I am usually one of those authors who writes a one-shot and then gets a million requests to continue it, and I have to tell them, really, I'm sorry, I just have a ridiculously short attention span when it comes to fanfiction! But with this fic, people told me the first chapter was fine by itself, and I'd already planned out exactly where it was going. So…fuck on a biscuit. But anyway, here it is, the final chapter. It's short, like the first. Thanks for reading all the way through!**

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><p><span>like a name from a fairytale<span>

CHAPTER THREE

_and she cannot wait to meet him_

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><p>One bright and shining summer's day, a little girl with hair like fair and eyes as green as the rustling trees sat silently, playing with a centipede. She named it Alfonso, and Alfonso was the most fascinating specimen she'd come across in all her six years of life. She kneeled over him in the dirt, her hair parting on either side of her face, the wind enticing a few flyaway strands. She had a twig in hand, and she was placing obstacles in Alfonso's way to see how he would tackle them (unlike other kids her age, the notion to actually <em>harm <em>the centipede did not even cross her mind). Alfonso endured her ceaseless tests with impressive fortitude and patience, and he was uncharacteristically accepting of the girl, with her lanky, unproportional stature and bright-colored head. Perhaps he thought she was a sunflower.

At first, she thought it was just the whistling of the breeze through the tree branches. After all, they were all around her, a safe haven of fantasy and wonder for her and Alfonso; they sang all the time, or hummed at least, and sometimes Amelia liked to pretend she could predict when the next gust of wind would come, and when the trees would burst into song. Sometimes she liked to pretend she could understand what they were humming, speak their language, or sing it, at least. Sometimes she wasn't pretending.

Amelia knew the sounds of the outdoors well. They'd become a part of her, burrowed deep inside, something she couldn't name but could detect the moment something was even slightly off.

And so she stopped, looked up, listened. Alfonso seized this opportunity, and with a sigh of relief and exasperation, he scurried off into the grass.

The trees were swaying wildly now, their arms surging from side to side, their leaves brushing together, their cores buzzing, twigs crackling and branches whacking, and Amelia realized they were trying to tell her something.

She placed the sound. It was not the trees—it was something else. A whir. A whisper. An engine, a start.

She tilted her head up to the sky and there it was, the blue pumpkin carriage, the valiant white stallion, Peter Pan's ship in the sky, the Tardis—whatever you want to call it, it was there, and she recognized it. How? One must suppose only the gods of time can be sure of that.

The carriage landed, and he stepped out, the hero of her story—only six-year-old Amelia felt a wave of something she did not yet understand (and wouldn't fully, until the day she died) and knew that he was so much less, and so much more.

She frowned as he stepped closer to her, and he smiled, but it wasn't a smile.

"Hello, Amelia," he said.

"I've seen you somewhere before," she said.

He smiled, but it wasn't a smile.

"In one year, a man who looks exactly like me and talks and maybe even acts like me will be back here with you, but he is not me. At least, not anymore."

"I don't understand," said six-year-old Amelia.

"Of course, of course you don't," answered the Doctor, seemingly to himself, as his forehead furrowed. "Just…listen to me, Amelia," he said, and he knelt down to meet her eyes, taking her hands and holding them. "Just promise me…promise me you'll always remember…" Tears fill up his eyes, and it is only now that he realizes he has not cried yet, not once. "Always remember that no matter how hard I try, I can't stop being yours," he whispers, choking. And he gets up. He has to leave now. His mission is complete, and that is all he can allow himself. It should never have been a mission in the first place.

He starts toward the Tardis, then stops and turns around. His sweet little Amelia is staring at him, mouth hanging open, a frown upon her precious face.

"Oh, and Amelia," he says, "when that other man comes in a year, he won't know this, he won't remember this, but…" He smiles, winks at her. "…Don't feed him apples. They're rubbish."

And then he is gone, the wind raging and the trees joining in the frenzied chorus.

The wind whips her hair like fire across her face, and she looks up at the blue carriage, watching it sail away on an open sky.

"Goodbye, Doctor," she says, and she cannot wait to meet him.

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Rory's still clutching her body and weeping when the Doctor gets back.

"How long've I been?" he asks solemnly, his eyes unable to veer from Amy's cold, colorless face. Her hair looks like dead leaves trodden under foot in autumn now, and autumn isn't summer.

"Thirty seconds," Rory rasps, and then he whirls around, anger in his plain brown eyes, bitterness in his once-mild voice. "Where the _hell _did you go, anyway?"

The Doctor smiles, but it isn't a smile. He shoves his hand in his pockets, and shuts his lids, and a million colors, all the same, dance before his eyes like fire.

"I went to watch a fairytale unfold," he says.

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><p>THE END<p>

Reviews very, very much appreciated.


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